1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical score display apparatus, and more particularly to a musical score display apparatus for displaying performance data with lyric data in the form of a musical score.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known an apparatus capable of displaying a musical score of attractive appearance on the basis of performance data such as MIDI data (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (kokai) No. 11-327427). In such apparatus, when musical score display data are generated from performance data, the display width of each measure (bar) and the allocation of time positions of successive notes (intervals of notes) in each measure are controlled such that notes corresponding to events of different timings are not displayed in an overlapping condition.
Further, some performance data of such a type include event data (lyric data) representing corresponding song lyrics. Such lyric data also include timing data as in the case of note data, and are also displayed to match the musical score displayed on the basis of the note data.
However, in the above-described conventional apparatus, although, for note display, the width of each measure and intervals of notes are adjusted so as to prevent notes of different timings from overlapping on a displayed musical score, the adjustment is performed only for the purpose of eliminating overlap of notes, and overlap of lyrics is not taken into consideration. Therefore, in a location where the intervals of notes on the display screen are narrow, character strings of lyric data are often displayed in an overlapping condition.
A conceivable measure for coping with the above problem is use of a function of expanding the display screen in the time axis direction (the playback direction), which function is generally incorporated in such an apparatus. However, when such a function is used, the entire musical score is displayed with a constant enlargement ratio. Therefore, in a location where the density of notes is low from the beginning, and corresponding lyrics are displayed without overlap, the character intervals of the lyrics are increased excessively, which makes reading of the lyrics difficult.